Are We Really Blessed? The Beatitudes, Charlotte, and the Church We’ve Become
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This week on This Ain’t It, we sit with the Beatitudes and ask a question that ended up being a lot heavier than it sounded at first: Are we blessed? After reading the passage out loud, Matthew says, “Maybe I don’t really fall within that blessed category,” and that cracks open a conversation about faith, politics, economics, and the way American Christianity has distorted Jesus’s own words.
Russell Moore once wrote about pastors being accused of “liberal talking points” simply for quoting Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. And as we were talking, that connected too neatly to what we see now—Christians labeling the Beatitudes “unrealistic” or “not practical for modern life.” The question quickly shifts from Are we blessed? to Do we even want to live the way Jesus said?
When “Blessed” Stops Sounding Like Jesus
Melissa points out how the word blessed has taken on a whole new life in American Christianity. Instead of meaning comfort for the poor, the grieving, and the marginalized, it’s become shorthand for success, privilege, and material security.
As she says in the episode, “When people say they’re blessed, they usually just mean they’re lucky or doing better than someone else.”
Meanwhile, Matthew brings up how the whole system we’re living inside of was built with one type of person in mind: “It was made for the basic white man,” he says, and everyone else is navigating the fallout of that design while being told the system is fair or God-ordained.
Charlotte, Fear, and the Loss of Compassion
We dig into the recent Charlotte immigration raids—where 30,000 students stayed home from school in a single day out of fear. Melissa says, “That is heartbreaking,” and the conversation turns to how easily fear becomes a political tool.
Fear of immigrants.
Fear of the outsider.
Fear of being asked to care.
At the same time, Melissa shares the viral story of the mom who called 42 churches asking for help with baby formula—and only nine said yes. Nine.
It leads to a painful but honest question: How did churches become places where someone can hear 30 minutes of worship music but not find a can of formula?
Puritanism, Capitalism, and the Gospel We Created
We talk about how blessing got tangled up with the Puritan work ethic and capitalism. The idea that “good things happen to good people,” and therefore bad things must mean God is disappointed.
Melissa notes that so many churches talk about the Beatitudes as if they’re metaphorical—or worse, optional. The bootstrap gospel shows up everywhere: work harder, pray harder, stay quiet, don’t question the system.
But as Matthew puts it, “I don’t know where people get the idea that the Beatitudes are supposed to be about us being comfortable.”
They aren’t.
And that discomfort is the point.
Boswell’s Modern Beatitudes
We turn to W. Benjamin Boswell’s sermon How to Be Blessed, written during the 2017 Muslim ban—a moment that feels eerily connected to what’s happening now. His modern Beatitudes speak blessing over:
- refugees
- immigrants
- Black and brown lives
- disabled people
- Muslims
- the grieving
- the ones who show up for others
They sound a lot more like Jesus than the “hashtag blessed” culture that fills Instagram and church lobbies.
These blessings force a question: Who do we stand with, and who do we avoid standing with because it might cost us something?
So… Are We Blessed?
By the end, we aren’t talking about blessings at all—we’re talking about responsibility. About solidarity. About how faith isn’t performance or privilege or comfort.
As Melissa says toward the end, “Maybe being blessed isn’t something we claim. Maybe it’s something we choose to be for somebody else. A blessing.”
And that’s the real question we’re left with in 2025:
Are we blessed? Or just comfortable?